Shkoder

Shkoder is a city in northern Albania, spread across the Mbishkodra Plain between Lake Shkoder and the Albanian Alps foothills at the confluence of the Buna, Drin and Kir rivers, with 61,633 residents in the city proper at the 2023 census and a metropolitan population of 202,254, the fourth most populous city in Albania. Among the longest continuously inhabited settlements in the world with roughly 2,200 years of recorded history beginning as the Illyrian settlement of Skodra in the 4th century BC, it was conquered by Rome in 168 BC and became capital of the province of Praevalitana, and it remains the traditional capital of northern Albania and the cultural heartland of the Albanian Renaissance.